The latest in a series of interviews with artists whose work makes use of or responds to network culture and digital technologies.

Zachary Kaplan: A few months back, I was on my way to your studio just as you posted a picture of Anna Wintour walking down the street (maybe at Prince and Thompson?). At first I thought, "Why is Anna Wintour skulking around SoHo alone, and how great is this photo?". But then I worried, "Jeanette's not going to be at her studio; she's out in the world capturing this picture that seems so 'on brand.'" When I arrived at your studio in Nolita, though, you were there working on some stuff for New Hive. That all of this seemed to be happening at once—the instagram of Anna Wintour, the in-progress montages, the general thrum of your studio—felt very specific.

In mid-January, a Facebook friend liked a status update, causing it to pop up in my News Feed; I've been avidly following its thread ever since. Now at 675 comments and counting, this rich exchange encapsulates the increasing importance of the art-related discourse that takes place on Facebook, and its precarity.

Facebookers, what do you think of this: artist Joe Scanlan, an older white male artist, invented a fictional artist, Donelle Woolford, who is female, black, and seems a bit younger than he is. Scanlan hires actresses to 'play' Donelle for pictures and interviews, and he makes the artwork that she 'makes'. He began this project about 13 years ago. Donelle Woolford is in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Here is an interview with Scanlan by Jeremy Sigler. Is this racism? Conceptual performance? Critical discourse on artworld hierarchies? Problematic exploitation? Discuss.

Critics, artists, former students, and, often, Scanlan himself responded, generating a thorough critique of the artist's practice, meaningful discussion about race and gender in contemporary art today, and a crowdsourced bibliography. Strikingly, its ebb and flow mimicked the public dialogue around Scanlan/Woolford in the art press—from curiosity (many had no idea of the project at the outset) to confrontation (stoked anew in May by The Yams' public withdrawal from the Biennial in protest), all in a slow burn. The texture and depth of this response evidenced Facebook's specific ability (for better and worse) to produce engaged networks and make visible their interactions.

The latest in a series of interviews with artists who have developed a significant body of work engaged (in its process, or in the issues it raises) with technology. See the full list of Artist Profiles here.

Edward Shenk on The Jogging, 2014

ZK: Let's start with your Theorist works, widely known for their circulation on The Jogging, and, from there, their secondary, unintended circulation on actual far-right and conspiracy theory-oriented Facebook and Tumblr channels. These image macros take up typical conspiracy theory grist (i.e. Chemtrails, Obama, Osama, etc.) but confound conventional interpretation via intermix of language and image. The circulation has been widely commented on; once picked up by a fringe Facebook group, the photos erode these groups' message-making ability. Their composition not as much. As someone long interested in conspiracy theories, their verisimilitude is what first interested me. So, I wanted to get into your methods—how are these composed and what are your research touchstones?

EMS: I became fascinated by these image macros in the summer of 2013 when I'd see the occasional one pop up in my Facebook news feed. Besides content I was also hooked by just the sheer number of them. The people who would post and share them would do so ad nauseam, and it was never just one conspiracy. I began following the same FB pages as they were and saving the jpegs to a folder on my PC that now contains over a thousand macros.

In 1996, curator, critic, and educator Joshua Decter colorfully defined "media cultures" as "a euphemism for how we reproduce ourselves, as a society, into a spectacular—i.e., ocular and aural—organism whose viscera has become technology itself."

Throughout his career, Decter has paid special attention to media cultures and their relationship with the public sphere, developing a curatorial practice that has long been distinguished by its openness to adjacent new media and net art practices. Beyond spectacle, his use of websites, apps, and other technological apparatuses sheds fresh light on artists and artworks generally considered to be decidedly analog.

I invited Decter to walk me through three curatorial projects, all ambitious group shows, that exemplify his career in digital and AFK spaces. In each, the artwork is mediated—either by conceit, didactic, or display—so as to variously diffuse and emphasize the image, addressing the nature of art and its publics under the condition of networked technologies.

Writing in 1970, Gene Youngblood advocated that artists take up the technologies of the moment—special effects, computer art, video art, multi-media environments, and holography—to expand the consciousness of their publics. The theorist claimed that artistic experience can change us into more aware and self-conscious human beings, and inform new ways of being in the world. Our question today is: How can contemporary aesthetics and artistic experience—enabled by the technologies of the moment—expand our consciousness and help us to change the fundamental concepts that organize our reality, like creativity, technology, sustainability, and collectivity?

Following the exhibition Voyage to the Virtual, this evening engages artists, curators, and critics in a conversation that takes up Youngblood's quest for the utilization of new technologies in aesthetic experience, and considers the relationship between expressions in contemporary artistic practice, expanded perception, and consciousness.

Not a real answer (but with truth): the hazard of the 'write this fast in the morning' post. My words were not so specifically chosen there, and were meant as a shout out to something widely circulating.

A better way to have phrased my shout out would have been: "I'M paying attention to this, and trying to figure out why I find it so engaging." Particularly as Rhiz Today is meant to be a working document, as much as a post/link dump/etc. — and as, as announced, October will bring a First Look project with the artist (http://www.newmuseum.org/press/download/79). I'm not working on that, however.

Personally, I've been following the feeds very closely, particularly after seeing Ulman's talk with Fredric Brandt at Swiss Institute, which offered a fair amount of context for her practice more broadly. I do find the project engaging, and have thought about it via performance (of gender, communication, intimacy, and on), a history of physical augmentation in art, attention economies, and my well documented interest in life in the 'CASCADE' overall. Preliminary feelings: I think it's well-studied and well-performed, and fairly complicated w/r/t the characters it apes.

In the end, however, I'd be very interested in hearing other opinions—particularly yours!